Posted on 06/05/2014 1:27:21 PM PDT by Wolfie
If I remember correctly, back in the early 1970s there was a move to legalize Marajuana . It looked so promising many of the most popular names for MJ were quickly trademarked.
The move failed so the smokers began smoking Mexican mj that had been sprayed with the weed killer Parquait.
This was common knowledge back then.....supposedly one of the big tobacco companies even tried to trademark some names.
"No Stems No Seeds That You Don't Need....Acapulco Gold Is......*toke*.......Bad Ass Weed."
Singapore may be a police state of sorts but, in many ways, it is less of one than the United States . . . very big on economic freedom, for instance, if it doesn't involve stuff like drugs or chewing gum. There is also no denying that their model works. I lived in Japan for 15 years and spent a lot of that time doing business with Singapore. They are some of the most honest and pro-American people on the planet. They told me that circa 1960, before they implemented the current draconian laws, a good share of them were addicted to narcotics. It was a major drag on economic growth and emergence from third world status.
I'm not saying their model would work here. We lack the political will to do it for one thing. I'm just saying that our War on Drugs has clearly failed and it is time to try something else, if not the Singapore model, then yours.
I think it boils down more to the society than the government. Singapore made a conscious choice to change as a people, they were going to stop being one of the poster children for lawlessness. Part of that was draconian laws on a lot of small crimes, but the bigger portion of the fix was really on the societal level, most of their more draconian stuff doesn’t get enforced very often because the people have edited those behaviors out of themselves.
That’s harder in America because we’re so big and so very much not a monoculture. In a country that can’t decide what is BBQ and what you call a cold cut sandwich it’s hard to see us coming together and saying “this behavior here, we’re just not doing that anymore”, and even if we do there’s so many of us that the outliers will be legion. You can see that with the spree killers, we as a society are against it for obvious reasons, but even if only 1 in a million can’t “handle” that rule that still leaves 311 people no “on board”.
That becomes even more so with drugs. Let’s face it, in the end drugs are part of the entertainment industry. And I don’t mean that as any kind of anti-Hollywood thing, I’m saying that at least until one becomes addicted drugs are fun. We spend a lot of time and money on fun in this country, whether it’s movies, TV, books, sports (participating or watching), or drugs. We like to have our fun, and in spite of everything going on we seem to have plenty of time and money to have fun. You’re not going to edit out one type of fun. Even if a very small percentage of us choose that type, x 311 million means that small percentage is a lot of people, and a lot of money for the providers. The smart answer really is legalize, put it under regulations similar to booze and smokes, make it part of corporate revenue not a cartel business, and get some tax revenue.
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